The Spectral City. Leanna Renee Hieber

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СКАЧАТЬ bid you toast the inception of her Ghost Precinct. Now, because we live in an age of skeptics and charlatans in equal measure, we’re not going public about this Precinct beyond our department heads here. We don’t need undue fuss, we don’t need hysterics. What we know conclusively is that this young woman’s talents aided in solving two brutal murders to date. As we near a new century, no one knows what new crimes will come with it, but one thing we can count on is that there will always be the dead, with a perspective none of us have. It’s foolish to leave such a resource untapped, especially as this city grows by the thousands every month.

      “We await many more resolutions and have directed her to cases that have gone cold. Perhaps, dare I say, she and her colleagues may even garner a few premonitions to stop a crime before it’s even begun! To the young lady and her ghosts! Whether you’re a believer or not, she has assured me there’s nothing to be afraid of!”

      There was a polite if less than enthusiastic clap of hands.

      Nothing to be afraid of . . . she repeated to herself. That’s exactly your purpose on this earth, to make ghosts a less frightful reality for those who do believe. For those who can see, for those who want to know. You are the voice of the departed, you are their champion. Be proud. Show these people how proud you are to be the advocate for the dead.

      Eve nodded to the politician, squared her shoulders, lifted her flute, and allowed herself to enjoy the distinct, sweet bite of a good champagne, feeling the chill of the dead on the air. If her spirits could not calm her nerves with their presence, at least their drastic temperature wafting towards her warm cheeks made her appear more poised and stoic than nervous in the spotlight.

      While she was fairly certain she was the only one present who could fully see and interact with her spirit department, she didn’t rule out that some members of the force might be aware that they were being watched from beyond the veil. While the ghosts had disobeyed Eve’s orders to stay entirely away tonight, at least they were keeping their distance from the attendees, as some of her friends and family were too affected when more than one was in the room. When she had agreed to be noted in tonight’s reception, she’d done everything in her power to avoid a scene.

      The intense, inimitable Mister Roosevelt had never tried to convince the New York Metropolitan Police Force that creating a ‘Ghost Precinct’ was a good idea; he had simply done it. He made it Eve’s purview and ensured, thanks to powerful allies, that she had access to departmental services, support, and resources. He had also kept the press out of it lest the Precinct become, as he’d said, “an unnecessary rodeo. I don’t want to field calls for you to contact departed loved ones unless they can solve crimes.” Roosevelt wasn’t a man who much cared what other people thought when he was committed to a cause, and that quality was maybe the only thing she had in common with the bombastic legislator.

      When Roosevelt had told her family he wanted to honor Eve and the Precinct, her grandmother Evelyn, whom she was named for, had taken control of the arrangements to ensure the reception was held in the grand downstairs foyer of The Players Club, Edwin Booth’s beautiful brownstone complex in Gramercy Park, established in hopes of making the theatre more respectable—a much harder sell after his brother had killed President Lincoln.

      While most of the city’s grandest clubs were for men only, as was the Players Club’s regular membership, Eve fought additional stigma regarding Spiritualists, mediums, psychics and the lot—a hierarchy of respectability that kept a celebration like this relegated only to theatrical spaces. Whether they were believed or exposed as frauds, people passionately loved or hated a woman who spoke with the dead. There was hardly a middle ground. She could not be entirely lauded, and would always be considered suspect. Eve had heard one detractor say that people like her were for ‘parlor tricks, not politics’. The man had been a New York congressional representative and had stood in the way of her department when it was first being finalized with the police commissioner. Roosevelt had ignored him and had bid Eve do the same. She was hardly as positioned or as powerful as the Governor, but she tried to follow his lead.

      Her parents, Lord and Lady Denbury, were sitting off to the side of the richly-appointed foyer. Poised on cushioned benches against the wood-paneled wall, they watched uncomfortably, in elegant but subdued evening dress, matching the tone of mourning dress Eve had taken on out of the kind of respect and engagement she hoped would ensure spirits’ ongoing help. The mourning, she felt, was not only a uniform for this work, it was a mission.

      To either side were her grandparents, Evelyn looking on in beaming pride in a stunning black gown direct from France, taking the mourning cue from her granddaughter. Her grandfather Gareth looked pleasantly baffled in a plain black suit, choosing to cope with a strange world by way of detached bemusement. This attitude had served him well thus far and kept relations with his clairvoyant wife at their most pleasant.

      Eve’s parents had come to know the paranormal by violent force. By murder and horror. Her father was a titled English Lord who had been targeted by a demonic society, her mother was a middle class New Yorker. She and Gran had been the only ones who had helped him and it was incredible they had survived at all, having both been targeted by abject evil. They’d survived thanks to cleverness, good friends and Gran’s help. They’d fallen in love, married and remained in New York, hoping to have a normal life with their newborn Eve, praying none of what they went through would be passed on to her. They would never fully accept a life lived with ghosts at the fore and Eve could not expect them to.

      The gifts Eve manifested placed a distinct strain on the family. Not wishing to bring such loving parents any inconvenience, let alone pain, she had tried to block out her gifts, once.

      That effort had nearly killed her at age nine. When she’d tried to stop hearing the dead, migraines had seared her head for weeks, and she couldn’t eat or sleep. Only when she opened back up to hear the murmurs of the spirit world could she breathe again, her fever breaking and life returning to her paranormal normal.

      The reality of this precinct meant she could never go back on her talents. The dead would never let her. Her parents knew it, as she could tell by their haunted gazes. A new chapter had begun.

      Roosevelt was staring at her. So were her ghosts, expectantly. So were all the men.

      “Would you like to say a few words, Miss Whitby?” Roosevelt prompted.

      “Ah.” She wouldn’t have liked to, really, as nerves always got the better of her if she was put on the spot in such a manner, but it was necessary.

      Taking a deep breath, she thought about what was best to say. The absence of trust in the room felt like an impossible gulf to cross. She wanted to thank her mediums but that seemed odd after not having invited them. She didn’t want the patrolmen, detectives and lieutenants to look at a group of four young women of vastly different backgrounds and judge them all as a threat. She wanted that pressure to land solely upon herself, and keep her Sensitives sensitive, not defensive.

      Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that this department was her mission, it was not about her. It was about respect for the great work of mediums and all the good the dead could do for the living. Just like Edwin Booth had sought to lift up the profession of theatre by this grand space. This freed her to speak with a calm, crisp tone.

      “In this day and age of charlatans and magicians in the guise of Spiritualism,” she said. “I blame no one for their skepticism. In fact, I encourage it. Skepticism offers investigative integrity. A questioning mind solves a case. My specific and unprecedented Precinct hopes to earn continued trust by the thing we can all always agree on: solving crime and easing suffering.”

      She could see the unsure faces before her, some bemused, some seeming openly hostile. Every woman entering a predominantly male field had encountered these СКАЧАТЬ